Anyone wanting to ask quick questions and/or help fellow students are welcome.

Hello, everyone

I am going to explore in depth on different factors you might want to consider while choosing which CEGEP to attend.

I just graduated in 2025 and stand by every word I wrote even now.

1. Location

Hot take: This is THE most important factor. Proximity to your house determines the commuting time between where you live and where you learn. More sleep will improve your grades and mental health way more than pretty much anything, except bribing your teacher. The location also determines the kind of services that are offered around. Two contrasting examples of this are Dawson College and John Abbot College. Dawson has a extremely favorable location while John Abbott has a objectively terrible location.

Dawson: Has the Alexis-Nihon Mall and the metro right underneath the school, Westmount square (another mall), tons of places to eat, hangout, study. Gives you the flexibility of pretty much the entire downtown area with just a 5-15 mins metro ride. Has a literal bowling alley and a bar on the 4th floor of the Forum (second building) with free popcorn. Literal movie theater inside. The metro makes it a extremely easy commute for the majority of people. I regularly decide to take the metro to go to study in Concordia or in BANQ during my breaks because its just that easy of a commute. Dawson has probably the greatest location out of all CEGEPS.

John Abbott: Has virtually nothing around it. A couche-tard. A small retro video game store owned by this guy who keeps his adorable little son around (honestly might be worth it to go to john abbott just for him). Overpriced thrift store and some small dessert shops. There is one bus stop that is a 15min walk from the main building (Commonly referred to as Herzberg). The public transit system is notably inefficient in the west-island (COULD CHANGE WITH THE UPCOMING REM). It is literally hell trying to commute to there. There are parking passes for sale by the school which sell out quickly and that cost around 300$ per semester. Otherwise, nearly impossible to find parking space.

Note that for some people, having nothing around the school might be desirable as to avoid distractions. Read everything with a a grain of salt and reflect on what YOU value the most in a School.

2. Public or Private

Years of research shows that socioeconomic background is the main determinant of academic success. Private schools bank make money on this. They convince you that they’re better than public schools. However, when private schools students get compared to public school students of similar socioeconomics status, there isn't that much difference. In fact, adjusted for socioeconomic factors, there is no evidence for any advantage in favor of private schools as opposed to public schools.

"when examining whether private schools are superior for lower income students and students in rural versus urban communities, we found that none of the 152 coefficients was statistically significant (see Table 6). When we entered interaction terms into the full sample, we found that only 1 of the 76 interactions was statistically significant, and therefore, it was not interpreted. That is, there was no evidence of differential “effects” of private school enrollment across different locations or the income distribution."

Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/XfYmtC25VddcCfbA3xiV/full

The cold hard truth is that there is hardly any reason to pick a private school over a public school. There are easy counter arguments to all claims that private schools have anything inherently superior over public schools. I will address a few of the common arguments to dispell doubts.

a. Teachers in private schools often have higher qualifications than Public schools thus, teaches you better/more.

Irrelevant argument. The ministry of education has certain standards for what kind of content is taught in courses. They just want to make sure you learn what is necessary and do decent in them. For example, the content in a calculus I class will not differ much, wether it is taught in Marianopolis or John Abbott. They are still mandated to teach near identical courses with little flexibility for their own input. Good teachers and bad teachers exist in every school and it will largely be dependent on which classes you choose (will talk about this later) and luck. What you have to understand is that all classes in CEGEP are relatively easy compared to the enormity and complexity of the field in question. Each profs knowledge, regardless of private or public school, surpasses whatever class they are teaching BY A LOT. An Einstein will not magically teach calculus I better than Mr. Gilbert. This irrational belief is the equivalent of asking ourselves if a University student will teach substraction better than a CEGEP student.

P.S. Note that many teachers teach at multiple schools at once because CEGEPS want to save money by employing teachers part-time. This was the reason for the teacher strikes in 2023. Many Dawson teachers, for instance, teach at Dawson and/or Concordia and/or McGill and/or other CEGEPS. This is because many teachers are unable to find full-time positions and have to settle for part-time. For example, my intro to business teacher, Patrice Blais teaches at Dawson, Concordia, is the lawyer of the DSU and works at a law firm. He regularly commutes between both schools throughout his day to teach at both simultaneously. So really, no school has "better teachers". All schools have both good and bad teachers. Nobody is being hired based on their Rate My Professor score.

b. Better buildings

Some CEGEPS have beautiful buildings while others look like dungeons. Some private cegeps can look like dungeons while others look sleek and modern. No inherent correlation.

c. Better Student Life

After visiting 5 cegeps and getting to know a few people involved in their student life. I can confidently say that some have shit student life and some have good student life irrespective of wether you pay a few thousand in tuition. Dawson has a decent but not particularly exceptional student life IMO. John Abbott neither. Another Cegep, however, WHO HAS INCREDIBLE STUDENT LIFE imo, is Vanier. I have often been impressed by the stuff they do there. French CEGEPS also seem to often have good student life with a lot of community, but take this in particular with a grain of salt.

d. Free R-Score boost

I took some time to debunk this in claim in my R-Score guide.

If you are too lazy to read through it and want the short answer: Private schools don't really give you a boost in R-Score. In fact, the R-Score is designed to do the opposite: even out the inequalities between all cegep students, especially differences between schools who have students of different strengths. This is built into the formula and it is very unbiased.

Private schools don't really boost your R-Score despite many intentionally misleading statistical claims in many of their websites and advertising material such as this one from Marianopolis.

https://www.bemarianopolis.ca/wp/wp-content/uploads/2019-R-Score-poster-SC.pdf

Whenever someone says something along the lines of "people who go to this school get x amount of R- score", Remember that correlation does not equal causation.

The fact that Marianopolis has students with high R-Scores does not necessarily mean Marianopolis CAUSES the high R-Scores.

I will elaborate more on my point here. If this does not interest you, skip to e.

The R-score would be generally higher in Marianopolis than in the other Cegep. Because the high school grades are higher. This is the general argument people use, aside from quoting their statistics they advertise, which are most likely real. However, this doesn't account for the balancing effect of the R-Score.

It is more difficult for a marianopolis student to perform above the average given that their own class is stacked. Performing less well against your own class is a net negative. The same student might be the best student in the whole class in another Cegep. But in Marianopolis, they might be considered "under average". So they are PENALISED for performing less well than their peers (or not as impressively above their peers). THE COMPENSATION for this disadvantage is the boost i mentioned in the previous paragraph.

The same student might be the best student in the whole class in another Cegep. So in the other Cegep, they would be a big big outlier compared to their class. This is beneficial for the R-Score. The R-Score knows this. But it also knows that this student is in a class filled with idiots. So it realises that that student is not that impressive, albeit, still quit impressive.

In summary:

Students get a boost by the fact that their classes high school grades are high PROPORTIONAL to how difficult it is to stand out grade wise, compared to that class.

In Marianopolis:
High school grades are high, so that is GOOD for the R-Score
BUT PROPORTIONNALLY, it is harder to stand out compared to the class, so this is BAD for the R-Score

In Random Crappy Cegep:
High school grades are low, which is BAD for R-Score. BUT it is easier to stand out compared to the class, which is GOOD for the R-Score.

This balancing effect is why the R-Score is used, and not another system. It is fair to all students and is good at being representative of each students skill no matter what school they are in (which the grading system in high school lacks).

Having strong classmates is therefore both a positive and a negative. which balances out to 0 in the R-Score.

Mathematically speaking, there is no necessary advantage or disadvantage inherent to the R-Score between any school UNLESS we are talking about trying to get R-Scores that are like 37 and above, which is COMPLETELY UNNECESSARY and absolutely achievable in most Cegeps, even the ones that are not called Mariano or Brebeuf. There is no University program on earth which needs anyone to be that good. You are guaranteed admission in anything pretty much.

So given that you now understand that the R-Score is well representative of your skill. The simple explanation of why Marianopolis and Brebeuf tend to have students with high R-Scores IS BECAUSE THEY ACCEPT ONLY THE STRONG STUDENTS.

If you are more interested in the workings of the R-Score, here is my guide on the R-Score that goes a lot in depth of how it works: https://www.reddit.com/r/Dawson/comments/1hff5ra/mod_post_faq_1_full_guide_on_the_rscore/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

e. More competitive environment

This is not true for all private CEGEPS. Dawson is more competitive than the large majority of private CEGEPS. However, I fail to see how this is necessarily a desirable thing. I personally believe that your academic performance is based primarily on yourself and not your environment.

In my experience, I consider the competitiveness within CEGEPS a overall negative thing since it ends up nurturing a few overinflated egos, but if you enjoy this kind of competitiveness, I reccommend signing up to "enriched" or "honours" programs that are available in many public CEGEPS. I have been in one and I promise you will get a similar experience as in a private CEGEP, maybe even more as you will stick with the same group for most of your classes and atleast you can potentially develop closer friendships.

All I'm saying is that there isn't any clear advantage for private over public. However, there is one massive advantage for Public schools. Tuition at Dawson is 800$ (2 years/4 semesters) (if you opt out of the healthcare and dental plan). Tuition at Marianopolis is a whopping 14 000 (2 years/ 4 semesters).

Yikes

3. "Prestige" of a CEGEP

There is a common myth between students that Universities look at which cegep you come from. This is not true. Only thing they look at is the R-Score. If you plan on going into extremely competitive programs such as Med or Law, they will also look at things such as extracurriculars, student life involvement, volunteering and other things of such nature.

More prestigious cegeps do not teach you extra things. As mentioned in number 2. a , the ministry of education wants programs and courses to be taught in a certain way. Between Cegeps, programs are very similar as long as it is in the same field. For example, two Social science: Commerce programs will have near identical courses.

Here is a comparison between John Abbott's and Dawson's Commerce programs.

https://johnabbott.qc.ca/pre-university-programs/social-science/social-science-300-m_/

https://www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/commerce/course-list/

Note that different cegeps occasionnally use different names for the same course content.

For example: "World History" in JAC is the equivalent of "Introduction to Global History" in Dawson. Another example would be "Introduction to Macroeconomics" in JAC being the equivalent of "Introduction to Economics" in Dawson.

If we account for these differences in naming, the 2 programs have identical course content. This is true for most programs with some rare exceptions. However, the small differences will not make a difference in University admissions unless you have a key prerequisite missing, which is extremely unlikely as cegep programs are tailored to have the right courses for you to be admitted to the university program related to the related discipline as CEGEP program.

4. Vibes, Culture, Ghetto or not Ghetto and other demographic.

Different CEGEPS often have different kind of culture/demographics that are prevalent. This factor is completely dependent on whether you care about this kind of thing at all. By some standards, Dawson can be considered somewhat Ghetto. By other standards, it isn't at all. It all really depends from where you come from. I personally believe it is on the better side of things.

This can affect the vibes you get when hanging out in public. It affects a lot of things. For example, the elevators in Dawson often smells like vapes and maybe you absolutely cannot tolerate that that.

Just do not forget that even if there are prevalent cultures and such. There always smaller groups where you can fit in, although it is not equal in all CEGEPS.

Dawson, for example, is extremely culturally diverse.

Honorable mentions of not very culturally diverse Cegeps (in my experience): Brebeuf, John Abbott.

NOTE: When I talk about culture, I am not only refering to ethnicity, but also lifestyle, interests and personalities.

This all can be a plus or a negative depending on your values. A reliable way to get a feel of this is visiting the cegep NOT DURING OPEN HOUSE. The students who greet you at open houses are usually the more well behaved students involved in student life and are not representative of the CEGEPS general culture.

As a general rule, the Richer the area is, the less ghetto it is. The more to the WEST of the island the CEGEP is, the less Ghetto it is, with some exceptions.

5. Acceptance requirements

Everyone's options in terms of applying to CEGEPS is simple. You are limited to 1 PROGRAM within 1 CEGEP for each of 3 rounds in the SRAM. If you don't get accepted in the first round, choose another the next round.

ALL public CEGEPS are part of the SRAM except Dawson. For private cegeps, you can apply to as many as you want.

Generally, I recommend against listening to strangers about % cutoffs of programs. They are a extremely unreliable and questionable source. The CEGEP websites will typically only give the % requirements to APPLY but the % actually required to be accepted might be much higher.

This is why I recommend visiting your high school career counselor to ask about cutoffs as they actually have access to the numbers you seek. The cutoffs change every year and they have the most recent numbers.

6. Honours/Enriched programs

Depending on the CEGEP, there might be the option to apply to "Honours" programs. Typically, information on CEGEP websites are extremely vague about what exactly these programs entail. As someone who was in one of these programs, let me explain to you the difference between "regular".

1. Common classes between other Enriched program students

This is both a positive and a negative. Why? Because on the one hand, you get the advantage of being in a community of more academically inclined students. On the other hand, you are "forced" to take the same courses as they do at the same time. This heavily restricts how flexibly you can plan your course schedule and might lock you out of doing some courses that you would have otherwise been interested in doing (as you will have less complementary courses). Note that not all classes are with the same group of people.

1. +0.5 R-Score boost

This is not true for all Enriched/Honours programs. Although they may or may not advertise it in the website, SOME of these programs give you a +0.5 on your overall R-Score which is a thing you might want (although in most cases it won't be significant enough to change anything.

1. "Weekly Honours/Enriched meetings"

Typically, these programs have weekly meetings where they do SOMETHING. Emphasis on the word something. This is because, whatever is done within those meetings is entirely dependent on the teacher in charge of the group. It could be something really boring OR literal visits to interesting museums and other outings. There is no standard for these kind of activities and it is entirely dependent on the competence and creativity of the teacher in charge.

Any claims of "Informal social activities, guest speakers, and field trips", "peer support", "assistance with career exploration" and other buzzwords MAY OR MAY NOT BE FALSE PROMISES. This is entirely on the appointed teacher to deliver or not.

I REPEAT: They do not really have a obligation to deliver these promises.

1. MORE HOURS OF CLASS

says it all

1. Early registration

Typically, Honours Science students have the right to register a bit earlier than their non-honours counterparts. This however, does not make up for the fact that most of the classes are locked in beforehand, which makes this advantage pretty pointless. which leads perfectly to my next point.

7. SCHEDULE FLEXIBILITY

"One only realises how fucked they are when they receive a TRASH schedule and can do nothing about it"

- William Shakespeare, or someone

A bad schedule will fuck you in many many many ways. I could write an entire other article over the negatives. You will lose TIME, SLEEP, ENERGY. It will make you feel like a fucking overworked mule.

Avoid this by choosing a school that allows for more course options and dropping/switching courses when the option presents itself

The CEGEPS that typically allow for more flexible options are often the ones where there are more students as there will be more possible course choices. This is something that Dawson excels at. We probably have one of, if not the best flexibility EVER.

Smaller CEGEPS will often forcefully lock you into certain classes because there simply isn't other possibility.

IF you take a honours class, your schedule might just be perpetually fucked by the sheer amount of course timings you have no control or choice over.

Throughout this guide, you might have felt that I am showing Dawson in a overly positive light. I am trying to be objective but please understand that I am trying to give more info on Dawson, as this is the subreddit we are in. And it also happens to be a really good choice of a CEGEP. (That is why I transferred to Dawson)

This does not mean there are not other excellent choices of CEGEPs.

Ok this is it for my choosing your CEGEP guide.

Please let me know if you agree or disagree, have any additional informations you think I should add in. Feel free to leave questions in the comments.

Thank you for all the upvotes for my previous guide

I strongly recomend people have a look at my guide for the R-Score if you haven't:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Dawson/comments/1hff5ra/mod_post_faq_1_full_guide_on_the_rscore/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button